‘Demi is awake’: Pop star in stable condition after apparent overdose scare

Kushners Unload 666 Fifth Ave. to Brookfield in 99-Year Lease

The Kushner family’s real estate company has secured a crucial investment in its over-leveraged New York skyscraper, reaching a deal to lease the building’s office space for 99 years to a Canadian asset manager.

The arrangement with Brookfield Asset Management Inc. may let Kushner Cos. -- run by the family of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner -- salvage its biggest single investment, a marquee tower in midtown Manhattan known simply by its address, 666 Fifth Ave. Terms weren’t disclosed.

The Kushner family’s years-long hunt for a partner has at times drawn intense public scrutiny, as talks opened with overseas investors, then ultimately collapsed.

Rather than pay the rent on an annual basis for the so-called leasehold, Brookfield will give Kushner Cos. an upfront sum that will allow the company to pay off outstanding debt on the building, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the details are private.

The Toronto-based investor is prepared to inject up to $700 million in equity and will essentially take control of the building unencumbered with a 100 percent leasehold, the people said. A Brookfield representative declined to comment.

The deal provides relief to Kushner Cos., which bought the 41-story tower for a record-setting $1.8 billion in 2007, making a splashy entrance to the Manhattan real estate scene. The transaction was funded with more than $1.7 billion of loans, and rapidly ran into trouble when property markets cratered following the financial crisis. In 2011, Vornado Realty Trust took a 49.5 percent stake as part of a deal to rework the massive debt load and stave off foreclosure.

Read more: The troubled history of the Kushners’ tower

Kushner Cos. has sought other partners since at least 2015 to help it untangle the ill-timed bet. Potential investors have included Anbang Insurance Group and an investment vehicle controlled by a member of Qatar’s ruling al-Thani family. Both firms had considered an ambitious and expensive plan to knock the tower down and build another twice as tall in its place. But talks fell apart.

The building lost $25 million last year and has almost always been unprofitable. As a first step in its latest restructuring plan, Kushner Cos. said in June it would buy out Vornado. Vornado continues to own the retail portion of the property.

The cash infusion from Brookfield comes just in time, with a $1.2 billion mortgage on the property coming due in February.

Jared Kushner, who’s married to the daughter of President Donald Trump, stepped aside from managing his family’s company when he became a senior White House adviser. The search for partners has been led by Charles Kushner, Jared’s father.

Airier Offices

Brookfield said it was making the investment through one of its private funds, and its Brookfield Properties subsidiary will operate the building and launch a major redevelopment program and upgrade it.

The company intends to update the aging property with lighter and airier offices that would command higher rents, the people familiar with the matter said. The update would be similar to those Brookfield has made to properties including Manhattan’s old Daily News Building, they said, adding that the Kushner Cos. would not participate in gains from the work until Brookfield earns a return on its investment.

“Given Brookfield’s experience in successfully redeveloping and repositioning major office assets in New York and other cities around the world, we are well placed to capitalize on that opportunity,” Ric Clark, Brookfield Property Group’s chairman, said in a statement Friday.

The two companies have done deals before, investing in a New Jersey mall redevelopment and putting up loans to buy floors of the former New York Times building.

Brookfield’s Spree

It’s been a busy week for Brookfield and its affiliates. On Monday, the company agreed to acquire Forest City Realty Trust Inc. for $6.8 billion. That was followed by the $3.3 billion acquisition of Canadian furnace, water heater and air conditioner provider Enercare Inc. by the publicly-traded infrastructure arm of the company, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners.

Brookfield has also been seeking partners on some of its New York properties. On Aug. 1, the asset manager’s real estate arm said it sold a 28 percent stake in a group of its office and apartment properties in the city, giving it proceeds of about $1.4 billion.

(Updates with background on partner search from fifth paragraph.)

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Cohen recorded Trump discussing payment to ex-Playboy model

Washington (CNN)The FBI is in possession of a recording between President Donald Trump and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen in which the two men prior to the election discuss a payment to a former Playboy model who has alleged an affair with Trump, Rudy Giuliani and a source familiar with the matter told CNN Friday.

The recording about the former Playboy model, Karen McDougal, was among the troves of documents and materials seized in the FBI raid of Cohen's hotel, residence and office earlier this year amid a criminal investigation of Cohen by the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. A transcript of the recording was reviewed by the Trump legal team, which does not believe it poses a legal problem for the President.

The President has waived privilege on the McDougal recording, said two sources briefed on legal discussions surrounding the materials seized in April.

The recording had been deemed privileged by a former federal judge, known as a special master, one of the sources said, adding that Trump's lawyers have sent a letter to the special master asking to withdraw the privilege. This gives the government access to the recording as part of the US attorney for the Southern District of New York investigation into Cohen.

The September 2016 recording is the only recording of any significance involving the President, another source said, despite there being hundreds of recordings.

The disclosure of the McDougal recording, which was first reported by The New York Times, raises fresh questions about the lengths to which Trump and his confidant would go to suppress allegations of extramarital affairs from becoming public before the election. Adult film actress Stormy Daniels has sued Trump over a $130,000 agreement Cohen made to her on Trump's behalf to keep her quiet about an alleged affair, which Trump has denied, along with McDougal's allegations.

McDougal eventually signed a contract with American Media Inc., the company that owns the National Enquirer, which barred her from publicly speaking about the alleged affair before the 2016 election.

On the recording, Cohen and Trump discuss buying the rights to that contract from AMI, according to Giuliani, who described the contract as a "nondisclosure agreement." The discussion, Giuliani said, involved their intention "to reimburse AMI for what they laid out and to do it by check, properly recorded."

The conversation was relatively quick, between approximately 90 seconds and two minutes, a source familiar with the tape said.

Giuliani added that "nothing in that conversation suggests it was a campaign contribution. There's no discussion about harm to the campaign" during the recorded conversation, which took place two months before the presidential election. The discussed payment to AMI ultimately never happened, according to Giuliani.

The source familiar with the tape said Cohen recommends buying the rights to the story and Trump asks questions about how they would go about doing that.

A source familiar with the AMI deal with McDougal disputed Giuliani's description of the deal. The source said it was not a nondisclosure agreement but a license agreement that clearly outlined the nature of its editorial aspects of the agreement.

Campaign-finance law experts say that if a payment is made for the purposes of influencing an election -- for example, to quiet allegations that could harm a candidate -- it can be considered a campaign contribution even if it isn't made from a campaign account. If such payments were made routinely and would have occurred regardless of the existence of any campaign, however, they may not be regarded as in service of an electoral effort.

Trump lashes out; other attorneys react

Giuliani said Trump had no idea he was being recorded during the McDougal discussion, which took place in the then-candidate's office at Trump Tower in September 2016. When informed about the recording, Trump said, "I can't believe Michael would do this to me," a source familiar with the tapes told CNN.

Trump lashed out at Cohen on Twitter Saturday morning, saying it was "inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of (and) perhaps illegal."

A spokeswoman for the US attorney's office and Cohen declined to comment. Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, told CNN in a statement the recording will not hurt Cohen.

"Obviously, there is an ongoing investigation and we are sensitive to that," Davis said. "But, suffice it so say, that when the recording that has been widely reported is heard, it will not hurt Mr. Cohen. And any attempt to spin cannot change what is on the tape."

After Trump's tweet, Davis added Saturday in a post on Twitter: "The strategy of @realdonaldtrump @potus @RudyGiuliani is flawed; just as is #Trump's false #Twitter statement made against @michaelcohen212 this morning. Rudy claims the tape is "exculpatory". Why so angry?"

When asked about Davis' tweet, Giuliani told CNN: "How would you feel if your lawyer was recording you without telling you. The tweet is straightforward and correct."

McDougal's attorney Peter Stris tweeted on Friday: ".@karenmcdougal98→ When @realDonaldTrump said we were lying, do you think he meant we WEREN'T?" an apparent reference to Trump's claim of having misspoke at the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week.

When asked by CNN if first lady Melania Trump had a comment on the news of the recorded conversation, her spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said in a statement, "Mrs. Trump remains focused on her role as a mother and as First Lady of the United States. We will have no further comment on the topic."

Part of the criminal investigation of Cohen by the US attorney's office has examined possible election law violations related to payments made to women who alleged sexual encounters with Trump. One focus of the searches in April, CNN has reported, was to seek records on Cohen's payments to Daniels, who has alleged such an encounter, and on an agreement set up between McDougal and AMI, whose chairman and CEO is a close friend of Trump.

Cohen hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing.

Other recordings exist

NYT reporter: Clearly Trump knew about payment

There are other tapes of Cohen and other "powerful" individuals that the FBI seized beyond the President that could be embarrassing for the people on the tape and for Cohen, according to a source familiar with the tapes. The source said the people are of "significance and consequence."

The source familiar with the Cohen tapes said there was nothing illegal about the discussion, but acknowledged there could be ethical issues about Cohen recording his own client.

Giuilani has known about the tapes for several days, and has reviewed the transcripts, he told CNN.

In recent weeks, documents and other evidence obtained during April's searches has begun to be turned over to the government as the special master, Cohen's lawyers and lawyers representing Trump and the Trump Organization have moved through the process of determining which of the millions of items are subject to attorney-client privilege. The special master, Barbara Jones, however, so far has found the vast majority of the items reviewed to be not privileged, according to court filings, indicating that very little of what Cohen did in recent years qualified as legal work.

In recent weeks, Cohen's public remarks have raised suspicions that he could be willing to seek a cooperation agreement with the US attorney's office that would require him to provide information federal prosecutors could use against other individuals they are examining. It's not clear, however, whether the US attorney's office would be willing to grant Cohen such an deal.

In an interview with ABC News that was released earlier this month, Cohen said that protecting his family -- as opposed to Trump -- is his priority.

"My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will," Cohen said.

McDougal free to discuss allegations

Karen McDougal and the 'catch and kill' system

In August 2016, McDougal signed an agreement with AMI, Us Weekly, Men's Journal and several other publications. She believed at the time the contract was a work agreement that would allow her to be photographed for and write pieces that would run in the companies' publications.

Her attorney for that negotiation was Keith Davidson. She told CNN she later found out Davidson was in contact with Cohen. In a lawsuit, she accused Davidson of "working closely with representatives for Mr. Trump while pretending to advocate on her behalf." Davidson denied the allegations and told CNN that he reached out to Cohen during the final stretch of the 2016 campaign as a "professional courtesy" to let him know that he negotiated the deal with AMI.

McDougal later realized she could face a financial penalty for speaking to the media about her story. In April, she reached a settlement with AMI that allows her to discuss the alleged affair.

Speaking with CNN's Anderson Cooper in March, McDougal alleged that she and Trump were together "many dozens of times" and answered in the affirmative when asked if they were intimate.

McDougal described the alleged affair from 2006 to 2007 as a consensual, loving relationship, and said she did not know Trump might have seen other women at the time besides his wife -- and that throughout their relationship, he did not use protection.

On Friday, asked if the President still denied McDougal's allegations of an affair, Giuliani said: "I haven't asked him again. I don't know if that's changed, but none of this tape suggests that he did."

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Boy aged three injured in ‘acid attack’

Facebook loses $120 billion in market cap after awful Q2 earnings

Facebook’s share price fell more than 20 percent in after-hours trading today after the company announced its slowest-ever user growth rate and a scary warning that its revenue growth would rapidly decelerate. Before today’s brutal Q2 earnings, Facebook’s share price closed today at $217.50 — a record high — but fell to around $172 after the earnings call. That’s a market cap drop of roughly $123 billion. In two hours, Facebook lost more value than most startups and even public companies are ever worth.

Here’s the full story on Facebook’s disastrous Q2 2018 earnings:

Facebook sees mixed Q2 earnings with slowest-ever growth, stock tanks

So why did Facebook’s share price sink like a stone? There are five big reasons:

Slowest-ever user growth rate – Facebook’s monthly user count grew just 1.54, compared to 3.14 last quarter. Daily active users grew even slower at 1.44 percent, compared to 3.42 percent last quarter. For reference, 2.18 percent was its previous slowest DAU growth rate back in Q4 2017. Suddenly hitting this wall could limit Facebook’s total user count over the long-run, and its revenue with it. Facebook tried to distract from these facts by announcing a new “family of apps audience” metric of 2.5 billion people using at least one of its apps, which will hide the shift of users from Facebook to Instagram and WhatsApp.

2.5 billion people use at least one of Facebook’s apps

User count shrank in Europe, flat in U.S. & Canada – Facebook saw its first-ever decline in monthly user count in Europe, from 377 million to 376 million. It got stuck at 241 million in the U.S. and Canada after similarly pausing at 239 million in Q4 2017. Those are Facebook’s two most lucrative markets, with it earning $25.91 per user in North America and $8.76 in Europe. If those markets stall, even swift growth in the Rest of World region, where it earns just $1.91 per user, won’t save it.

Decelerating revenue growth – Facebook’s revenue grew a remarkable 42 percent year-over-year this quarter. But CFO David Wehner warned that metric would decelerate by high single-digit percentage per quarter over the coming quarters. Wehner said a combination of currency headwinds, new privacy controls and new experiences like Stories will contribute to the deceleration. This news is what caused Facebook’s share price to drop from -7 percent to -20 percent.

Privacy and well-being – Q2 saw the debut of Europe’s GDPR that forced Facebook to change its privacy policies and get users to agree to how it collects data about them. Wehner blamed GDPR for Facebook loss of users in Europe. That law and Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal led the company to have to improve its privacy controls. These could make it tougher for Facebook to target people with ads or show their content to more people.

Meanwhile, Facebook has continued to adopt the “Time Well Spent” philosophy, removing click-bait news and crappy viral videos that lead to passive internet content consumption that studies say is unhealthy. Instead, Facebook is pushing features like Watch Party, where users actively interact with each other. Those might not produce as much time on site and subsequent ad views, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the changes are “positive and we’re going to continue in this direction.”

Facebook feed change sacrifices time spent and news outlets for ‘well-being’

The shift to Stories – Facebook estimates that by 2019, sharing via ephemeral vertical Stories slideshows will surpass sharing via feeds. The problem is that advertisers may be slower than users to make that shift. “Will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed? We honestly don’t know,” COO Sheryl Sandberg said. Stories ads might be full-screen and more immersive, but they don’t show off links to online stores, nor are they as well-optimized from decades of banner ad experience by the industry.

Luckily, even though Snapchat invented the Stories format, Facebook has far more people using it each day, with 150 million Stories users on Facebook, 70 million on Messenger, 400 million on Instagram and 450 million on WhatsApp. If Facebook does manage to figure out Stories ads, it could dominate, but it could take years for its advertiser count and ad prices to rise to offset the shift away from feeds.

Stories are about to surpass feed sharing. Now what?

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We Have No Idea How Bad the US Tick Problem Is

City responds perfectly to complaint about black child selling food

Image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

You'd think people would stop calling the cops on young black kids who aren't actually affecting their lives in the slightest, but here we are. At least this time the end of the story is a bit more heart-warming.

Jaequan Faulkner, 13, set up a little food stand outside of his home in Minnesota to help raise money for school clothes, and some heartless (read: racist) person called the police on him because he didn't have a permit to run a business. Instead of shutting Faulkner down, the Minneapolis Police Department came out in support of him and teamed up with the local health department to get him the permit he needed to keep running, the Associate Press reported earlier in the week.

SEE ALSO: 5 things white people can do before they call the cops on a black person

The story gained steam throughout the week, garnering more national attention and becoming a popular Twitter moment Friday night. People who learned about the story sympathized with Faulkner and praised the police for encouraging his entrepreneurial spirit rather than stifling it.

If you want responsibe adults and entrepreneurs, you have to enable them, not harass them. Hat tip to the @MinneapolisPD https://t.co/IbIfczwEsi

— Carol Forden (@CarolForden) July 20, 2018

The local news station KARE 11 News reported on Faulkner's small business, calling it a hit.

We first met Jaequan Faulkner and his summer hot dog stand in June. Someone complained to the city. Instead of shutting his stand down, the city of Minneapolis stepped up to help the 13-year-old get his permit. Next on @kare11. pic.twitter.com/WYKA8rqzEz

— Heidi Wigdahl (@HeidiWigdahl) July 16, 2018

According to KARE 11, Faulkner started his hot dog and snack stand in 2016 with the help of his uncle, and he returned this summer after taking a break last year. Shortly after getting up and running, a complaint was made to the Minneapolis Department of Health about his food stand, AP reported.

Instead of attempting to shut Faulkner down, the city pitched in and took care of his $87 permit so he could keep selling his food and making money for school. Not only that, the health department contacted a local organization to give him some tips on keeping his business thriving and making sure everything is as clean as it can be.

Staff from @MplsHealthDept, Minneapolis Promise Zone and @NEONBusiness helped bring Jaequan’s Old Fashioned Hot Dogs up to code and officially permitted by the City. pic.twitter.com/gyYWhsHXwB

— City of Minneapolis (@CityMinneapolis) July 16, 2018

Stories about individuals calling the police on black people who aren't doing anything illegal at all or black kids who are just trying to make some money have been blowing up on the internet recently, with callers like Allison Ettel and Jennifer Schulte getting publicly roasted for their prejudiced behavior.

Although we don't know for sure who called in the complaint on Faulkner, it's nice to see local authorities being reasonable and helpful rather than antagonistic.

WATCH: A Nigerian rapper covered Childish Gambino's 'This Is America,' and it's as powerful as the original

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